The Keepers and the Roman Catholic Church by Carol P. Christ

He told me his “come” was a sacrament… He made the sign of the cross with it on my breasts. Jean Hargadon Wehner in The Keepers

I sat glued to my television last weekend watching seven episodes of The Keepers one after the other. Out of all the horrific information in this Netflix documentary, these words stick in my mind. Jean Hargadon Wehner said Father A. Joseph Maskell told her that she was sinner after she confessed to him that her uncle had molested her. Father Maskell explained that her case was so severe that ordinary absolution might not work. Thus, he told her, she must participate in ritual sex with him in order to purify her soul. Jean Hargadon was too young and naive to question his authority. She only knew that she dreaded hearing her name called out on the school loudspeaker with instructions to report to Father Maskell’s office.

I watched Spotlight, the film that documented the Boston Globe’s expose of the Roman Catholic priest child abuse scandal, twice. It too was devastating to watch. Spotlight is a Hollywood film formatted as a detective story, focusing on a team of investigative reporters who refuse to give up until they bring the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Boston down. The story fits a familiar pattern: David conquers Goliath–or did he?

In contrast, The Keepers is a documentary that focuses on the untiring work of two ordinary women, Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Fitzgerald Schaub, who have been investigating the unsolved murder of their beloved teacher Sister Cathy Cesnik for years. They learn that one of the suspects, Father A. Joseph Maskell, not only molested scores of girls at Baltimore’s Archbishop Keough High School, but also that he offered some of girls to the police in order to ensure their silence and collusion.

At the end of The Keepers, no victory is celebrated. Many of Father Maskell’s victims committed suicide or died of drug and alcohol abuse. Jean Hargadon Wehner and the other women who spoke on the film, continue to suffer. The murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik remains unsolved. The murder of Joyce Malecki, who may have been killed because she knew something about Joseph Maskell or Sister Cathy’s death, is also unsolved. At the time of the filming, the Roman Catholic Church was testifying that the statute of limitation on child abuse crimes should not be extended.

People want to believe Francis is a good pope. His words concerning social justice and forgiveness have given hope to some. But his papacy is tainted by the cover-up of child sexual abuse. He was the one who appointed Australia’s Cardinal Pell as Vatican Treasurer, tasking him with cleaning up financial mis-dealings in the Vatican. What were Cardinal Pell’s qualifications? Pell headed the cover-up of the child abuse scandal in Australia.

As public allegations of clerical abuse grew, however, the Church turned to Pell, highly regarded as an able administrator, to save the Church in Victoria from reputational and financial damage.

Pell instituted an in-house scheme that, in return for the victims’ legally-enforceable silence, paid out a paltry average of $32,000 in compensation. This “hush money” scheme saved the Church potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from civil suits.

The scale of the abuse eventually came to light through a royal commission which had been prompted by police whistleblowers. The commission’s statistics were shocking: between 1950 and 2010, there were 4444 allegations of incidents of child sexual abuse made against 1880 priests (7% of Australian Catholic priests). Pell’s diocese of Melbourne topped the national body count.

A study of Swiss priests published on May 12, 2003, revealed that 50% of that clergy had mistresses. Father Victor Kotze, a South African sociologist conducted a survey of the priests in his country (1991) and found that 45% had been sexually active during the previous two year period.

Pepe Rodriguez published his book length study of the sexual life of clergy in Spain (La Vida sexual del Clero 1995). He concluded that among practicing priests 95% masturbate; 7% are sexually involved with minors and 26% have “attachments to minors;” 60% have sexual relations, 20% have homosexual relations.

He further refined the figures of 354 priests who were having sexual relations:

53% of these were having sex with adult women, 21% with adult men, 14% were sexually active with minor boys and 12% with minor girls. Although Rodriguez’ book caused a monumental debate no one has challenged the reality of his numbers.

According to Sipe, the widespread practice of “sexual sinning” among the Roman Catholic clergy makes it difficult for them to single out the child abusers in their midst. In other words, if more than 50% of the Roman Catholic clergy has “sinned” sexually at one time or another, who are they to cast stones at their brothers? Is Pope Francis himself one of the less than 50% of priests who have been celibate during their entire careers? And if not, does he feel he “shares” whatever guilt is attributed to those who break the vows of priestly celibacy? Could this be why as Pope he was willing to overlook or even to reward Cardinal Pell’s cover-up of the child abuse scandal in Australia?

Sipe warns that as long as celibacy is required of the Roman Catholic clergy, we can expect the cycle of abuse and cover-up to continue. Though the abuse of children is the most egregious, it is not only children who are abused in sexual relationships with Roman Catholic clergy.

In a throw-away line in The Keepers, Cathy Cesnik is quoted as having written to the priest with whom she was in love that she experienced his behavior as “erratic.” I assume that what she meant is that after they became intimate, he felt guilty and pulled away. How many adult women and men have been psychologically harmed by priests who act on their sexual urges and make promises they do not keep?

12 replies

Carol, thank you for this. Not only is “hypocritical celibacy a very sick system indeed”, but the demand for celibacy in the Roman Catholic priesthood is an affront to nature and the life-force in humans. Sexual energy is our goddess-given (sacred) creative energy and if this energy is suppressed it will go underground and bubble up in the dark where children, and others, become its victims. When will these “church fathers” let go of this unnatural state of affairs and allow priest to marry, whether same-sex or other-sex partners?

Good grief! What a scary story! Some priests are worse that vampires that only suck your blood. Worse than werewolves that only eat you alive. Pedophilia in the church seems to me to be a new kind of Inquisitional torture.

Thanks for this post. I only wish I had not read it first thing in the morning.

Thanks, Carol, for FLESHING OUT (pun definitely intended) the Roman Catholic sexual abuse scandal. I agree with Majak that “the demand for celibacy in the Roman Catholic priesthood is an affront to nature and the life-force in humans. Sexual energy is our goddess-given (sacred) creative energy and if this energy is suppressed it will go underground and bubble up in the dark where children, and others, become its victims.” The Vatican needs to learn a little about the psychology of sex, and at the very least, start clamping down on the priestly perpetrators.

It’s helpful that you bring such hidden information to public notice, so we can all see how the catholic church responds to and deals ! with allegations of child sexual abuse. So we the public can see the truth.

Thanks for your article Carol…. I was raised in an Italian Catholic Family but walked away from the church when was 16….never to return… I know that Pope Francis is well liked, and I myself have heard some good things from him. Nevertheless, he is still involved in a very, very sick system and that, in my view, reduces his credibility to almost zero….

So horrific! I have three nephews, now middle-aged men, who as youngsters attended a neighborhood parish, where one of of the priests was convicted of child sexual abuse. Although none of my nephews were a victim, my oldest nephew told me he suspected this priest of sexual misconduct with minors. When I told my sister (his mother), she said he told her that too, but she thought he was lying. I was furious with her when she said that. However, my sister has always been in awe of the clergy. It was like the one victim in Spotlight said when the reporter asked him if his mother defended him or went to the police,”She served him tea and cookies.” Families protected and defended these predators.